Every time someone asks me to recommend attractions in Paris, the first place I suggest isn’t the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre, but a museum that a lot of people have never even heard of: the Musée Carnavalet, dedicated to the history of Paris. It’s my favorite museum in the City of Light, and it’s the one I wanted to dedicate the very first post on my blog to.
Paris’s history is, for the most part, a violent one, yet the museum devoted to it sits in a quiet, intimate mansion, even though it’s right in the bustling heart of the Marais, on Rue des Francs Bourgeois, a street lined with boutiques. The mansion was built in the 16th century by the widow of the ambassador of the king of Poland to France.
The ambassador’s name was Kernevenoy, but since no Frenchman could pronounce it correctly, it gradually morphed into Carnavalet. During the 17th century, one of France’s most talented writers lived here: Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné (1626-1696), and this is where she wrote her famous letters to her daughter, the Comtesse de Grignan.
In these letters, she described life in the Marais and at the royal court in Versailles in vivid detail, and to this day they remain an important historical source for anyone interested in the history of France under Louis XIV.
The Hôtel Carnavalet was purchased by the city of Paris in 1866 to house architectural treasures rescued from the destruction that Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann inflicted on the City of Light as part of their rebuilding of the city. Over the years, the museum grew and expanded into the neighboring Hôtel Peletier Saint Fargeau.
At first glance, the museum looks a bit dated (there are no interactive displays like the ones you’ll find at the Château de Champs-sur-Marne, and the last time I visited, there still wasn’t enough information in English). But it lets you wander through several thousand years of Parisian history, and you’ll find not only kings and counts there, but also the ordinary people who made Paris what it is. In my opinion, that’s the main reason this is one of the most important museums in Paris.
What Will You Find at the Musée Carnavalet?
The Birth of Paris
The exhibit on French history begins with rooms devoted to the earliest period of Paris, the Neolithic era (around 10,000 BCE). As it turns out, Paris didn’t start on the Île de la Cité, but in the Bercy area, where archaeologists found stone tools like knives, plates, spoons, and even a ladle.
I’m pretty sure that if you dig deep enough, you’ll also find a deerskin apron that belonged to the first Parisian waiter (anyone who has run into Parisian waiters has noticed their bluntness, rigidity, and toughness, which they apparently brought straight from the Stone Age).
Further along, you can see remains from Lutecia, as Paris was called during the Gallic and Roman period (Lutetia means marshes, just like the word Marais, which describes the neighborhood where the museum stands today). Among other things, you’ll find knives and other surgical tools there that look remarkably similar to the ones used by surgeons today.
The Renaissance and the French Revolution
From there, we jump ahead to the Renaissance (if you want to get to know medieval Paris, you’ll need to visit the Musée de Cluny). There, you’ll find a fascinating mix of items in the same room. For example, a portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587), who was queen of France for about a year as the wife of Francis II (r. 1559-1560), right next to a painting of a party where a drunk man gropes a woman with Notre-Dame Cathedral in the background.
In this room, you’ll also get a sense of how the French turned their thriving city into a bloodbath. You’ll find a portrait here of the queen of France, Catherine de’ Medici (1519-1589), who planned the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, during which thousands of Protestants were murdered in the streets of Paris.
Her black eyes and hard stare make her portrait look more like a stone statue than an oil painting. There’s no doubt that one look from her would turn any of you Catholic. And that’s exactly what happened to her son-in-law, Henri IV, who switched religions a few times until he finally became Catholic for good in the late 16th century and coined the phrase “Paris is worth a Mass.”
Henri IV is memorialized in a rather strange way in this museum. He doesn’t have a room of his own, just a hallway where you can find fragments of his original statue, which once stood on the Pont Neuf and was destroyed by revolutionaries in 1792. The Musée Carnavalet somehow got its hands on a giant boot, an arm, a hand, and a horse’s leg, which together form a kind of memorial puzzle.
And indeed, the section devoted to the French Revolution is, in my opinion, the most fascinating part of the museum, because this turbulent period is shown through the eyes of ordinary people. You’ll find signs that were carried during demonstrations, which were clearly homemade by the protesters themselves, judging by the spelling mistakes you can spot there (one sign, for example, reads “Libeté” instead of “Liberté”).
So if you’re learning French right now, you can relax. Even in the 18th century, most French people made spelling mistakes, so your teacher has no grounds to complain.
There are also quite a few portraits of public figures dressed in revolutionary clothing (a smart move at a time when failing to prove your patriotism could land you a meeting with Madame Guillotine). It’s interesting to see that most of the paintings are pretty primitive, which probably means most of the talented painters had already fled France by that point.
And speaking of the guillotine, it hasn’t been forgotten either, with miniature ivory models of it on display. But the strangest item in this wing is a clock that shows revolutionary time (under the revolutionaries, the day was divided into 10 hours of 100 minutes each, with 100 seconds per minute). It’s no surprise this invention never caught on. Think about it: if every revolutionary hour equals 2.4 of our hours, the famous Parisian lunch break, which usually runs about two hours, would have lasted nearly five hours (without a doubt, an excellent reason to start a revolution).
The last days of the king of France are also well documented here, since the museum’s curators managed to reconstruct the room where Louis XVI and his family stayed at the Temple fortress. You can see that the king had a reasonably sized bed, a bookshelf, and even a miniature billiard table for his son (the future Louis XVII).
What’s especially interesting is the king’s laundry list. It turns out that in the last two weeks of his life, he sent out 17 shirts, 8 pairs of stockings, two pairs of pants, and 3 sheets to be washed. That doesn’t sound like much, until you remember that the only bedding the prisoners received was a scarf to hold back their long hair when the guillotine’s blade came down on their necks.
The 19th Century
The wing devoted to the 19th century at the Musée Carnavalet does a great job showing this turbulent period, during which, in under 80 years, Paris went from an empire to a Bourbon monarchy (1814), from the Bourbon monarchy to the House of Orléans monarchy (1830), from the Orléans monarchy to the Second Republic (1848), from the Second Republic to the Second Empire (1851), and from the Second Empire to the Third Republic (1870). A real historical game of musical chairs.
In this wing, you’ll find fascinating paintings on the walls that show us what historic buildings looked like, some of which no longer exist, before they were torn down during the 19th century. As you probably know, the greatest destruction in Paris wasn’t caused by wars or revolutions, but by peacetime. Between 1853 and 1870, Baron Haussmann tore down quite a few historic buildings, some of them genuine treasures, in order to build the boulevards we know today.
This is exactly why this museum matters so much: it managed to bring in entire rooms from palaces that no longer exist. A great example is the staircase of the Hôtel de Luynes, whose fresco painting creates a stunning three-dimensional illusion.
Once you’ve finished visiting the rooms devoted to Paris’s turbulent periods, you can treat yourself to the rooms dedicated to the Belle Époque (1871-1914). This was the era of the great World’s Fairs, when the Eiffel Tower (1889) and the Paris metro (1900) were built, and Paris flourished like never before.
This is one of my favorite periods, and the Musée Carnavalet holds quite a few paintings of Parisian street scenes. If you look at these paintings, you’ll realize that if you ignore the women’s fashion and the old-fashioned beards (which have now come back into style), you could almost believe these paintings were made today.
Cafés hold a place of honor at the Musée Carnavalet, and alongside quite a few paintings depicting scenes that took place there, there’s an entire room taken from a café that no longer exists. It’s a private room where wealthy Frenchmen could entertain their partners or mistresses in private.
And that’s what makes the Musée Carnavalet so enjoyable. The unique, sometimes quirky objects on display there manage to convey the atmosphere of every period in the history of Paris, from the day it was a fishing village to the day it became the cultural capital of the world. I promise you that after a few hours of wandering through this museum, you’ll become just as addicted to it as I am, and you’ll understand why it’s one of the most important attractions in the City of Light, one you really shouldn’t miss.
Musée Carnavalet: Visitor Information
I hope everything you’ve read so far has made you want to visit this magical museum, so the next section has the practical information you’ll need to plan your visit.
Where Is the Musée Carnavalet?
The Musée Carnavalet sits in the heart of the Marais, and the entrance is at 16 Rue des Francs Bourgeois.
How Do You Get There?
If you follow my walking route through the Marais, you’ll pass right by it. But if you’ve decided to visit on its own, I recommend taking metro line 1 and getting off at Saint-Paul. From there, head north on Rue de Sévigné, and you’ll reach the museum within a few minutes.
What Are the Opening Hours?
The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday, from 10:00 to 18:00.
Do You Need to Book Tickets in Advance?
In the past, you needed to reserve a ticket in advance (even though admission is free). That’s no longer the case, and you can simply show up and walk in.
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